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Monday, 13 February 2012

Swans 2 - Norwich 3

They say a good big 'un usually beats a good little 'un and although there's far more to Norwich than a 'They don't like it up 'em' approach there was a definite (controlled) aggression to their play that stifled Swansea for long periods.

With the only change to the Swansea team being McEachran coming in for the injured Allen, it'd be all too easy to lay a lot of blame at his door, one comment on a fans forum I read said having him in the team is like playing with two Leon Brittons.

This can be seen as both a compliment and a criticism, a compliment in that McEachran's passing was up to a similar standard as the South Wales Xavi, but maybe lacked the ability to break up play in the midfield that Allen shows as mentioned previously with regards to Allen's tackling stats.

Both Britton and McEachran had a 96% pass accuracy. All of Goalkeeper Ruddy's 19 passes were classed as long balls with only 4 successful

It's probably the case that conceding 3 goals in 15 minutes is going to be the focus of any post match inquisitions but the fact that Norwich hit the target with 9 of 16 efforts (56%) which included a couple of top class saves from Vorm suggests that the score could have been worse.

Credit however also has to be paid to the Norwich defence who made almost twice as many clearances as Swansea (47 compared with 24) and also blocked 6 of Swansea's shots (with a seventh being blocked by Lita).

I don't think that we've been found out or that Norwich have our number but they have a level of consistency of effort that is to be admired which includes the double over both Swansea and QPR contributing 12 of their 35 points.

In terms of positives for Swansea, another 2 goals for Danny Graham brings his total in the league to 10 making him the (joint) seventh highest scorer in the league. If he keeps the same ratio up he'll finish with 15+ goals this season which will be a superb achievement.